The 115th New York’s account places Sergeant-Major E. Raymond Fonda in a battle near Chester Station, Virginia, on May 7, 1864. The regiment was under fire, and a flanking maneuver threatened its position. In one retelling, Raymond was among the first to notice the danger and called out a warning to his commanding officer.

Other soldiers remembered his willingness to move along the line while bullets flew. The same exposed position that enabled him to see what was happening also placed him in danger. During the fighting he was struck and carried from the field. Later narratives praised his courage; their heroic phrasing reflects comrades’ memories rather than an impartial battlefield transcript.

Raymond survived the immediate injuries, but not the months that followed. Accounts preserved in the archive and summarized in the grave-restoration post trace his treatment from a field hospital to Hampton Hospital at Fort Monroe and then to the Ladies’ Home Hospital in New York City, where he died on 22 July 1864. He was buried in the John Fonda lot at Albany Rural Cemetery; his headstone and associated marble elements were restored in 2010, giving the story a visible memorial in the present as well as a place in the wartime record.

His experience turns a military statistic into a human story. The family archive’s list of wartime deaths includes names and regiments; Raymond’s case also preserves the terrible distance between being wounded in battle and dying weeks later. One may survive the day and still not survive the war.

Union soldiers crouching in wooded cover as an officer points toward a threatening flank.
During fighting near Chester Station, Virginia, on May 7, 1864, Sergeant-Major E. Raymond Fonda of the 115th New York reportedly warned comrades of an enemy flanking movement. Wounded in the battle, he died that July. Historical reconstruction; details and likenesses are interpretive.

Sources and references

  • Published history of the 115th New York Infantry, account of the fighting at Chester Station, 7 May 1864, and Sergeant-Major E. Raymond Fonda’s warning and wounds.
  • Eldert Raymond Fonda, gravestone, Albany Rural Cemetery, Menands, New York, photograph by Civil War historian Mark Bodnar, as documented in the 2010 grave-restoration materials. The inscription supports the dates and epitaph; the reported series of hospital transfers follows later compiled research rather than a presently cited original hospital register.